Life on Mars
Primary source references As a preface to this document, I want to point out that it is a shame that we have to continue to refute the same arguments that evolutionists keep bringing up over and over again in their attempts to argue against the fact of creation, which fact has been well established since the day the earth was created ex nihilo several thousand years ago.
It is also a shame that the masses have bought all this based on some circular reasoning about fossils, where fossils tend to be found buried, similarities between various life forms, the presence of certain decay products in rocks, and other inherently speculative arguments about the past, based on phenomena that exist in the present. If I hope to accomplish anything, it will be to simply encourage critical thinking. One must get past the arguments ad populum that its popularity counts for something , ad hominem that if you attack the person making the argument, this counts for something , and especially ad baculum that there are people who have the clout to decree it as true , to ask the key questions and challenge the unsubstantiated assumptions and thinking of those who would hold to the evolution position.
To date fossils outside the range of carbon dating, researchers use indirect methods of establishing absolute fossil age. Explain how this could be done using .
Volume 68, Issues 3—4 , January , Pages Radiometric dating of sedimentary rocks: It is currently possible to date igneous and metamorphic rocks by a variety of radiometric methods to within a million years, but establishing the depositional age of sedimentary rocks has remained exceedingly difficult. The problem is most pronounced for Precambrian rocks, where the low diversity and abundance of organisms have prevented the establishment of any meaningful biostratigraphic framework for correlating strata.
Also, most Precambrian successions have been metamorphosed, rendering original minerals and textures difficult to interpret, and resetting diagenetic minerals. Xenotime YPO4 is an isotopically robust chronometer, which is increasingly being recognized as a trace constituent in siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. It may start to grow during early diagenesis, typically forming syntaxial outgrowths on detrital zircon grains. Diagenetic xenotime occurs in a wide variety of rock types, including conglomerate, sandstone, siltstone, shale, phosphorite and volcaniclastic rocks, varying from early Archaean to Mesozoic in age.
The formation of diagenetic xenotime is principally related to redox cycling of Fe-oxyhydroxides and microbial decomposition of organic matter, leading to elevated concentrations of dissolved phosphate and rare earth elements REE in sediment pore-waters. In addition, it has an exceptional ability to remain closed to element mobility during later thermal events, and commonly yields concordant and precise dates.
In metamorphosed sedimentary rocks, diagenetic xenotime retains its age information up to lower amphibolite facies in sandstone, and up to mid-upper greenschist facies in pelitic rocks. In many Precambrian basins e.